and then, just when she expected him to drive away, he told her coolly, ‘You mustn’t take Vanessa’s remark too much to heart; I promise you I’m way, way past the stage where I attempt to make love to my dates on the front seat of a parked car. These days I prefer the comfort and privacy of a large double bed.’
The images so unexpectedly conjured up by his drawled words were so disturbing that Sara had to take refuge from them by staring fixedly out of her window. If she looked at Jonas now he would see quite plainly that in her mind’s eye she had seen that double bed and that, moreover, the slim female body entwined with his on it had quite unmistakably been her own.
The intensity of her arousal frightened her, making gooseflesh shiver over her skin. What was happening to her? She didn’t want this to happen. She didn’t want to feel this way about him…about any man! She had already lost one man she had loved; she couldn’t bear to lose another, and the only way to prevent that from happening was not to let herself fall in love again.
Fall in love? That was impossible. She could never fall in love again; she loved Rick. The familiarity of her thought patterns was reassuringly soothing, and helped her to dismiss the sudden surge of desire Jonas’s comments had aroused. Even so, she felt bitterly resentful that he seemed to have this almost frightening ability to bring such a strong surge of sexuality out in her. It made her feel unsure of herself, and dangerously vulnerable, that a man she disliked so strongly as a human being should have such a powerful effect on her physically. It was disturbing to realise that she was not fully in control of her own responses, that part of her could be so wilfully blind to the strictures of her mind.
‘That’s a very attractive dress you’re wearing.’ Jonas observed. ‘It has a touchable quality that seems to be missing from a good many modern fashions. Almost, dare I say it, a quality of sensuousness that’s very appealing to my sex. I’m flattered that you chose to wear it for me.’
His last comment was delivered in a tone so soft and low that Sara barely caught the words. When she did she froze, and turned to glare glacially at him.
‘I didn’t choose to wear it for you,’ she told him bitingly, ‘I had to wear it because it happens to be the only evening dress in my wardrobe.’
That wasn’t strictly true, but in her intensely emotional state she wasn’t prepared to recognise her own lie, her eyes flashing angry warning signs as his attention shifted momentarily from the road to her face.
Sensing that he didn’t believe her, she added hotly, ‘If you must know, I brought this dress to wear for…for my fiancé, only he was killed before…’
She broke off, conscious that her throat was so thick with tears that to continue talking would be to subject herself to the indignity of breaking down completely in front of her tormentor.
Without knowing why, she sensed that to be held in Jonas’s arms while she sobbed out her misery and guilt against his shoulder would shift the axis of their relationship completely, and that was something she didn’t want. She wanted to resent and dislike him, she recognised numbly. She didn’t want to admit that he might have characteristics that she could find attractive—and why? Because she was frightened of what that admission might mean.
Engrossed in her own thought, she was conscious of him swearing and the car swerving sharply. As her seat belt reacted to his momentary sharp pressure on the brakes, she felt it bite into her flesh.
At first she thought he had braked to avoid a bird, or perhaps a rabbit, but when she saw the look of bitter fury on his face as he turned towards her, his knuckles almost white as he gripped the steering wheel, Sara realised that she was responsible for their abrupt halt.
As his hands left the steering wheel and gripped her shoulders, her seat belt prevented her from cringing away from him. His eyes had the metallic gleam of someone pushed beyond their limits, the tension whitening the skin round his mouth and nose, making her shiver in sick apprehension.
‘If I thought for one momet that you were trying to substitute me for your dead lover, I’d…’
‘Substitute you for Rick?’ Sara felt her own anger rise to meet his, only hers was an anger that was spiked with fear: fear of him and fear of herself, combined with a sure knowledge that she was running headlong into the very situation she had been determined to avoid.
She let her anger against herself as well as against him underscore her words with scorn.
‘You could never take Rick’s place,’ she told him heatedly. ‘You’re not half the man he is. You never could be. You… What do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded thickly as he suddenly re-started the car and turned it round, with impatient jerky movements, driving back to the crossroads at a speed every instinct told her was dangerous.
It struck her as they reached the crossroads that he must be intending to take her home, but instead of turning off, he kept on going until they came to the gates of his house. Only then did he slow down, turning the heavy car into the drive.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ demanded Sara in panic. ‘We’re supposed to be going out to dinner…to…’
‘I’m going to do something I should have done the first time I met you,’ Jonas told her grimly, bringing the car to a sudden standstill outside the front door. ‘I’m going to show you once and for all that your fiancé is dead, and that you and I are very much alive. You can’t cling to the past for ever, Sara. It’s time you recognised the truth—that your precious Rick is dead…that he can never ever again hold you in his arms…that no matter how much you might claim you still love him, memories are no substitute for the pleasure of a warm living body in bed beside you…a man’s hands on your skin, giving you pleasure.’
He caught her wrist as she lifted her open hand to strike him, his grip bruising her fragile bones.
‘I’m glad you did that,’ he told her thickly, his eyes glittering beneath black narrowed lashes. ‘It makes it much easier for me to do this.’
The hard pressure of his lips on hers was shockingly intimate, his tongue thrusting into her mouth in a fierce rhythm that made shivers of erotic sensation slide down her spine.
It must be her anger that was intensifying the sensation so much, she thought dazedly, fighting against matching his furious assault with her nails and teeth in a response that had nothing to do with making him stop what he was doing to her.
His hands were on her bare back, she realised, his thumbs probing the satin band where it touched the outer curves of her breasts. She shivered as his thumbs eased beneath the fabric, touching her bare skin, and then, shockingly, his hands weren’t on her back any more, but were pressing against the chiffon-covered fullness of her breasts.
What was it about this man that so completely destroyed her self-control? she wondered hazily as she felt her nipples peak and thrust tautly against the heat of his palms. The way his fingers tightened on the outer swell of her breasts, his palms pressing against the diamond-hard nipples, told her that he was as aware of her arousal as she was herself. The knowledge should have been humiliating, but, shockingly, it was not.
Indeed, it was almost as though her anger had sparked off a chain of reaction that was leading to some sort of osmosis that completely changed her feelings for him, from dislike to desire.
Lost in the sensations evoked by his mouth and hands, she felt it a shock to be abruptly released. His fingers curled sharply into her arms as he held her at arm’s length.
As she tensed against the derisory comment she expected him to make, it was doubly shocking to her to hear him saying thickly, ‘I don’t know what it is about you that makes me feel like this, Sara; I only know that you’re the only woman I’ve ever met who arouses me to such a frenzy.’ He leaned forward and touched her half-parted mouth with fingers that visibly trembled.